OK, let’s dispense with the nonsense about Nuggets forward Danilo Gallinari. Please stop with the comparisons to Dirk Nowitzki before somebody strains all credibility or a back muscle.

And Gallinari will never be as good a basketball player as Carmelo Anthony.

But I’ll give you this: Gallo could become better loved than Melo ever was by Denver residents.

Starting with Nuggets coach George Karl.

“I think you could see Gallo playing in an All-Star Game someday,” Karl told me Monday.

Despite getting upstaged and beaten in New York by a recent 37-point performance from Gallinari, our old friend Anthony should send his replacement at small forward a thank-you note.

Gallinari is largely responsible for proving there is basketball life in Denver after Melo. Without 17 points and five rebounds per game from Gallinari, Denver could not be the proud owner of a 12-5 record and local fans would harbor far more reasons to be bitter about Anthony forcing a trade out of town.

Gallinari is the anti-Melo.

“Everybody wants to compare Gallo to Dirk Nowitzki,” Karl said. “You know, I coached Detlef Schrempf and I think Gallo has more intrigue in terms of Detlef because he’s more of a playmaker than he is a scorer.”

That’s the main reason comparisons between Gallinari and Nowitzki are so ridiculous. Are we so provincial in our world view of basketball that all European players look alike?

Nowitzki is a pure scorer, much like Anthony.

Ask Gallo about his childhood and you might be surprised at the response: He grew up as a point guard. That’s his mentality.

The real value of Gallinari to the Nuggets will ultimately prove to be a jack-of-all-trades forward who is as comfortable hitting an open cutter with a pass as he is slashing to the rim or launching a shot from 3-point range.

“Gallo doesn’t have a one-dimensional game,” Karl said. “I think it’s his package of different skills that is going to make him special.”

Schrempf made the All-Star Game three times and earned an appearance in the NBA Finals during a distinguished career that spanned from 1985-2001. If Gallinari can match those achievements, he, the Nuggets and your future grandchildren should be extremely happy with how the trade of Anthony worked out.

Gallinari comes equipped with a dangerous combination of a soft jump shot and hard drives to the basket. But he is not a natural-born gunslinger at crunch time, with an enthusiasm for shooting down the hoops dreams of the opposition that Kobe Bryant or Anthony brings to the court.

Is Gallo the man you want taking the big shot for Denver?

“I think that we have a lot of guys on this team who can take that shot,” Gallinari said. “So I think the coach will decide in the situation who is going to take the shot. I’m ready to take it and it would be great for me to take it, but I would not be mad if somebody else took it.”

On any given night, the Denver player asked to sink the pressure shots in the fourth quarter might be Al Harrington, Andre Miller, Arron Afflalo or Gallinari.

It gives Karl more options drawing X’s and O’s in the huddle. It gives the Nuggets the true vibe of a team that paying customers dig. But let’s see how well it works in the playoffs, when Oklahoma City forward Kevin Durant is daring somebody, anybody, to step up and outgun him.

In a word, Karl summed up my theory that the Nuggets need a closer like this — “Crazy.”

Hey, that’s more generous than what Karl usually thinks of my ideas.

The Nuggets want to pattern themselves after Boston’s Big Three in their prime, when the opposition never knew if the big shot was going to be taken by Paul Pierce, Ray Allen or Kevin Garnett.

“It reminds me of a good pitching staff. You want your ‘A’ guy. But you want your ‘C’ and ‘D’ guy to be almost as good as your ‘A’ guy,” Karl said. “You don’t want it to be ‘A,’ then a definitive ‘B,’ and by the time you get to ‘C’ you go: ‘Oh …’ “

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